I bought Dark Future when I was a kid but never played it. What are the rules like in this game? Do vehicles have stats like in BT?
I had Dark Future (wish I still did
), and the cars are the same scale.
Rules are pretty easy.
Each round is broken down into 'Gears' ranging from 1-6. All vehicles start the Game/Race/Scenario in 1st Gear. In each Gear Phase, vehicles in that GEAR or Higher may activate. So think of GEAR in this case as speed, the higher your gear, the faster you are going, and thus the more turns you can activate. Similar to BT those phases are broken down into MOVEMENT, ATTACK, and WIPE OUT.
In the Movement Step, a vehicle may select from a movement template that corresponds to the current Gear that vehicle is in. I.E. in GEAR PHASE 2, a Motorcycle currently at Gear 4 could select to go MEDIUM STRAIGHT, make either a TURN or a GENTLE TURN, SWERVE or VEER. It could not make a SHORT STRAIGHT, HARD TURN or HAIRPIN turn as it's GEAR is too high.
During Movement you can opt to roll a number of dice (6 sided) up to it's HANDLING value to try and get favorable actions. The dice results are HAZARD (bad), SPIN or SLIDE (good or bad depending) and SHIFT. You need SHIFT results to gear up or down, or to cancel HAZARDS. Every action gives HAZARDs, so SHIFTing up from 1 to 2 gives 1 hazard, Spinning or SLIDING give 1 HAZARD each, Collisions give HAZARDS, certain ATTACKS give hazards, etc. It should be noting that certain Movement actions are considered TRIVIAL at certain GEARs and grant FREE SHIFT RESULTS, so a MEDIUM STRAIGHT at GEARs 1-4 gives a FREE SHIFT result, and you could take that free Shift and GEAR 1 (and get only 1 HAZARD) and be done with turn, but sometimes you need to RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT!
If during Movement you Vehicle or the movement template overlaps another vehicle or obstacle, then you have a COLLISION. And this brings about one of the Cardinal rules of the game YOU TOUCH THE TEMPLATE YOU USE THE TEMPLATE - and the reasoning for this rule is to represent the high speed split decisions a driver must make.
So, after checking resolving collisions, the attack phase begins. A vehicle has 1-X crew (motocycles have 1, cars have 2, trucks have 3 etc), and a vehicle can make 1 weapon attack per crew, be that throwinging Molotovs, firing a hand gun, dropping caltrops or firing a Howitzer. And weapons have various arcs, either front, side, rear or 360. I.E. front mounted machine guns are forward only, but a crewman hanging out the side window firing a hand gun can fire any direction.
Attacks are easy, check range, roll up to X-amount of dice hits on 4+, 6's deal double damage. The target vehicle can evade damage, and rolls x-amount based on hits and cancels 1 per 6 rolled. Afterward evading, deal 1 hull damage per uncancelled hit.
Finally, in the WIPE OUT STEP any vehicle with 6 or more Hazards wipes out, and could flip, hit obstacles etc.
Then you advance the GEAR PHASE by 1 (from GEAR 2 to GEAR 3) and do it all again.
And Yes, Vehicles have STATS like BT. For example a Motorcyle has 4 HULL, a Max Gear of 6, a Handling of 5 and 1 CREW. By Comparison a Car has 10 HULL, a max Gear of 5, a Handling of 3 and 2 CREW.
When you play you build your team with CANS (of gasoline) - this games version of BV. A standard game is 50 CANS, which you use to buy vehicles, weapons and perks (determined by SPONSORS). So looking at MAC-n-CHEESE in the attachment below, we see that MAC is a TRUCK (middleweight class) with 12 HULL, a MAX GEAR of 3, a HANDLING of 3 and 3 CREW. It sponsored by SLIME (upper right) which grants it the LIVE FAST and PINBALL traits, has taken a Heavy Machine Gun facing the front, and a Machine Gun in the box facing the rear. It's been upgraded to have TANK TRACKS and has the Perk IN FOR A PENNY to give higher damage SMASH ATTACK (collisions with other vehicles) if it gains a lot of Hazards on it's turn.
Obviously there are a lot more rules than I covered here, like Audience Votes, Explosions, Respawns, Game Modes, Campaign play etc.
